


The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. -Edgar Allan Poe

by orphan_account



Series: 101 Quotes [3]
Category: Fargo (2014)
Genre: Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 22:38:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2205615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" </p><p>For Lester Nygaard,  it ends with a hammer and starts with the red trail of blood running down a nose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. -Edgar Allan Poe

**Author's Note:**

> If you read this and also happen to work in entertainment (yes, Graham Norton, I AM looking at you!), please, be so kind and do NOT use my work. I repeat, I do NOT give my consent for you to use this!  
> Also, if you are, by some weird coincidence, Moffat/Gatiss/Famous, do not read whatever I write. If you read this...close the page. Now. It's not too late yet. Because my writing is horrible and you will hate me. And yourself for reading.  
> Be kind, and do not share my work with cast or crew.

When he was a kid, young and without sorrow and not knowing the steady pressure of life that would push him down one day, he had read a book. Lester did not read often, no. So it was a rather remarkable fact. Basically he had been bored the whole day and decided to raid his father's library, an exciting quest. An adventure. He took every book that seemed vaguely interesting, which were two. 

In one of those books, right now, years later, he cannot recall which book it was or whom it was written by, there was this one sentence, one sentence that burnt itself into the back of his mind.  _The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague._ And right now, while splatters of bubblegum pink brain tissue belonging to his wife are adorning an old poster on the wall ( _what if you're right, and they're wrong?_ ), this is the first thing that runs through his mind. 

And no, no, he realises. Those boundaries are never vague. They are never distant and shadowy and blurry. There's no blurred line separating life and death. Because his wife, his wife, is dead, and there's nothing vague about it. Nothing hidden in the shadows. It's clear and bright and visible and it's a horrifying display of years filled with pent up anger that finally reached its peak. 

Killing, shit, it's easy. It's a rope around the neck, a bullet hitting the right places, a knife slicing open marble skin. Scarlet trails and ruby phlegm coughed up in a last act of desperation. Ragged breaths and the resonating sound of fluids filling up the lung.  Humans are fragile, fragile and brittle and so _unbelievably frail._

When he was eight, in biology, they learned about atonomy. He learned about the 206 bones the human body consists of and the muscles and the veins and the nervous system. Bones are a remarkably hard substance, almost impossible to break. 3300 Newtons of force only cause a mere crack in a bone. The skull is one of the hardest parts of the body, but right then, right then when the hammer broke through the skull with no evidence but the soft sound of a splat and a crimson rivulet running down her nose -the nose he once touched with infinite affection - painting her mouth red -the lips he once kissed recoloured in shades of death - it felt almost surreal. 

Surreal and perfect and finally. 

Because she's gone. 

The nagging. The pulling. The pushing. 

The breaking. 

It's gone. 

And that author might have said they are shadowy and vague at best. And you can't tell where the one ends and the other starts.

But Lester can.

To Lester Nygaard, it ends with a hammer and starts with the red trail of blood running down a nose.


End file.
